Ariel

by Derek Johns

  This passage is telling for what it reveals about Jan’s view of writing as a performance, of writers as exhibitionists: ‘envying musicians their cadenzas, actors their applause’. But she would go on to compose many cadenzas, and to receive much applause.

  Cairo was a place of stridency:

  Groping through the fragrance, all around the Immobilia building, were the noises of Cairo, which in those days were a harsh blend of the modern and the mediaeval. The cars hooted, the buses roared, the trams clanked overloaded around their precarious loops, but one heard too the cries of pedlars, musically echoing in the side streets, and the resonant call of the muezzin, not yet coarsened by electronics, the clopping of donkeys and the flip-flop of camels, and even sometimes the gentle chanting of the blind sages still employed by rich men, in that long-discredited Egypt, perpetually to recite the Koran at their doorsteps.

  The Arab News Agency was British-owned, its staff a mixture of British and Arab. It was a sort of clearing house for news in the region, collecting it from various sources and then disseminating it to newspapers, magazines and radio stations. The war in Palestine was reaching its height, and there was intrigue and corruption in Egypt in these final years of King Farouk’s reign. There was danger also: two of James’s ANA colleagues were arrested and imprisoned while he was working there.

  A striking observation in Conundrum is that women in the office appeared to have the same status as men. ‘I sensed in Cairo for the first time a curious acceptance or absorption which was to bind me for many years to the Muslim countries of the east …’ The idea of the Muslim world as one in which gender is subordinated to other characteristics is a startling one. But it would seem that part of the attraction of the Middle East for James was that it eased his sense of physical wrongness, a sense that had been growing stronger as he grew older.

  James’s sense of being in the wrong body did not prevent him from marrying. When he returned to Britain for his interview at Christ Church he met Elizabeth Tuckniss, who was providentially living in rooms in the house in Marylebone where James had landed up. They fell in love and decided to get married as soon as they could. Elizabeth went to Cairo with James for a final spell at the Arab News Agency, and in March 1949 their wedding took place in Paignton in Devon. That autumn they set up house in Oxford so that James might attend Christ Church and pursue his degree.

  The next phase in James’s journalistic career was with The Times. His first connection with the paper was established while he was editing Cherwell at Oxford. He wrote asking permission to reprint a photograph of Lord Northcliffe at the moment he took over The Times. His request was referred to Stanley Morison, who was a former editor of The Times Literary Supplement and now typographical consultant to The Times (and incidentally creator of the Times New Roman font). Morison suggested that James do some work for The Times during his vacations, and through this he was introduced to the foreign editor, Ralph Deakin. This was an ideal way to keep his journalistic hand in and prepare for the career he was then bent on. Once he graduated, Deakin offered him a job as a sub-editor.

  James was to spend five years on the staff of The Times, first as a sub-editor, then as a foreign correspondent, and finally as a star reporter. He describes the newspaper in these terms:

  The Times then was a newspaper like no other in the world, an institutionalized anomaly, a national fact of life standing somewhere, perhaps, between the BBC and the Lord Chamberlain’s office … Even in those last years of the British Empire foreigners still took The Times to be an organ of the British Government, and respected – or disrespected – its edicts accordingly.

  In his first months on The Times James sub-edited articles and wrote ‘fourth leaders’, opinion pieces that expressed the views of the paper but which, as their title indicates, came after other leaders which concerned the more important issues of the day. James did not care for sub-editing other writers’ words, feeling that he was discomposing the cadences of their sentences. He would far rather have been writing his own, more musical ones. Peregrine Worsthorne, who worked with James then, recalls how they would take corrected proofs to their authors upstairs for approval: ‘a high-risk activity, requiring great gifts of diplomacy, charm and sensitivity, with all of which James was preternaturally endowed’.

  Ralph Deakin admired James and quickly promoted him to be a foreign correspondent. His early stories concern events in many parts of Europe, though he did not then travel very extensively to get them. His first proper foreign assignment took him back to the Middle East, to the Suez Canal Zone. President Nasser of Egypt was becoming increasingly belligerent in his rhetoric and his actions, and James was the ideal person to cover the story. He spent several months in the Canal Zone, speeding around in an MG sports car he had somehow acquired. (This love of cars was continued by Jan: she has owned among other cars two Rolls-Royces, and in recent years has driven souped-up Honda hatchbacks. Anyone who has driven with her down the rutted track to her house in Wales will attest to her enthusiasm and skills, even at the age of ninety.)

  By late 1952 James was writing frequently about preparations for a new British-led expedition to ascend Everest. The Times was a sponsor of the expedition, and had exclusive rights to cover it. One story James wrote was headed ‘Everest Inviolate’, its subject being the problem of rarefied atmosphere at high altitude. There was a sense of great national expectancy over this enterprise, which, though it comprised climbers from the Commonwealth as well as Britain (and of course local Sherpas), promised to restore glamour and prestige to a country which otherwise was on the defensive. When James’s interest in the story led to his being nominated the official correspondent of The Times, he felt he was in sight of a summit of his own. He was by his own admission profoundly ambitious, and here was an ideal arena for that ambition. Jan wrote in Conundrum:

  There is something about the newspaper life, however specious its values and ridiculous its antics, that brings out the zest in its practitioners. It may be nonsense, but it is undeniably fun. I was not especially anxious to achieve fame in the trade, for I already felt instinctively that it would not be my life’s occupation, but even so I would have stooped to almost any skulduggery to achieve what was, self-consciously even then, quaintly called a scoop. The news from Everest was to be mine, and anyone who tried to steal it from me should look out for trouble.

  The steeliness of tone here is new. James was twenty-six, the fittest person on the staff of The Times, and he was up for a great challenge.

  It is hard now to appreciate what the ‘conquest’ of Everest meant in 1953. Perhaps the only enterprise since then which compares would be the first moon landing in 1969, and even this now seems rather quixotic. The summit of Everest and the surface of the moon are in some ways similar: they are both barren and wholly inhospitable to human existence. Any victory over them can only be symbolic. This is not however to deny the audacity, courage and ingenuity the climbers showed, or the air of spirituality that surrounds great mountains everywhere. George Mallory, the leader of an earlier failed attempt to climb Everest, when asked why he wanted to do it famously replied, ‘Because it’s there.’ This might be construed as being either very profound or simply a bald statement of fact.

  In 1953 it really mattered, not just to the climbers but to the world, that the highest piece of rock on the earth should be scaled. It was one of the last romantic challenges the natural world presented. French and Swiss expeditions had in recent years been abandoned, and now it was the turn of the British. And it really mattered to James Morris that he be the person who should place the news of this achievement before an anxiously aspiring public. The manner in which he set about this was stylish, brave, and not a little deceitful.

  The book in which James describes his experiences is entitled Coronation Everest. He flew first to Kathmandu, and there joined a party which was to take extra oxygen cylinders to the climbers. A mountain fastness, Kathmandu had ‘a distinct air of lunacy about it’. There were no
roads outside the city, and the party walked for eight days to join the team at their base camp. During this time James fretted about competition from other journalists. The Times might have official rights to the story, but what was to prevent other journalists from hanging around, hearing the news from Sherpas, and beating him to it? He learned that there was a radio transmitter in a town called Namche Bazaar, which was only thirty miles from the base camp, and as he was passing through he made sure to ingratiate himself with its operator.

  The message to London giving the news of a successful ascent had to be sent in code. But it must be a code that didn’t appear as one, so as not to arouse the suspicions of anyone along the way. James brilliantly devised a code that would make the news of success appear to be news of failure. Thus the code for Edmund Hillary was ‘Advanced Base Abandoned’, and that for Tenzing Norgay ‘Awaiting Improvement’. If the radio operator at Namche Bazaar or anyone in Kathmandu were to be co-opted by another newspaper, the story would remain safe.

  James joined the party at Base Camp, at nine thousand feet, and began to acclimatise himself (he would later climb as high as twenty-two thousand feet). He had met John Hunt, the expedition’s leader, in London, but now he had to settle in as an outsider. He soon showed his mettle, and came to be accepted warmly by the members of the team. He describes his comically inept attempts at proper climbing in the great tradition of the British amateur. He also describes the mountain itself:

  If I had seen Everest during the march, I had been ignorant enough not to recognize it; but from the ridge directly above Namche it was unmistakable. There it stood, a great crooked cone of a thing, at once lumpish and angular. The vast rock wall of Nuptse obscured its haunches, and on either side, stretching away to the horizon, stood splendid snow peaks, rank upon rank. A plume of snow flew away from the summit of Everest, like a flaunted banner; in a setting so beautiful (diffused as the whole scene was by a gentle haze) it seemed to me that Chomolungma, as the Sherpas called our mountain, was awaiting our arrival with a certain sullen defiance.

  James’s ambition was by now raised even higher by his sense of the sheer magnificence of the challenge. He describes John Hunt thus:

  The thing might only be the climbing of a mountain, but under the touch of his alchemy it became immeasurably important, as if the fate of souls or empires depended upon getting so many pounds of tentage to a height of so many feet. He was authority and responsibility incarnate. Is there a Leader-Figure in the mythology of the psyche? If there is, he was its expression.

  The climbers edged up the mountain, camp by camp, ridge by ridge, facing hostile weather and the sort of equipment failures and cock-ups that bedevil all enterprises of this kind. Along the way James had time to note the harsh beauty of his surroundings:

  The icefall of Everest rises two thousand feet or more and is about two miles long. It is an indescribable mess of confused ice-blocks, some as big as houses, some fantastically fashioned, like minarets, obelisks, or the stone figures on Easter Island. For most of the time you can see nothing around you but ice: ice standing upright, as if it will be there for eternity; ice toppling drunkenly sideways, giving every sign of incipient collapse; ice already fallen, and lying shattered in sparkling heaps; ice with crevasses in it, deep pale-blue gulfs, like the insides of whales …

  James was sending regular despatches back to The Times, via runners to Kathmandu. One day he received news of his own, the birth of his second son, Henry. He ticked off the days on the calendar, wondering even at an early stage whether he might be able to get the news of a successful ascent back to the paper to coincide with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, which was to take place on 2 June. It was clear to him what such a coup might do for his career. Finally Hillary and Tenzing, the designated climbers, set out on the last stage. James waited with the others at Camp IV, and eventually they were sighted far above, coming down.

  I watched them approaching dimly, with never a sign of success or failure, like drugged men. Down they tramped, mechanically, and up we raced, trembling with expectation. Soon I could not see a thing for steam, so I pushed up the goggles from my eyes; and just as I recovered from the sudden dazzle of snow I caught sight of George Lowe, leading the party down the hill. He was raising his arm and waving as he walked! It was thumbs up! Everest was climbed!

  The task of the climbers was over, but James’s was only truly beginning. With another member of the expedition, Mike Westmacott, he tore down the mountain (injuring his foot in the process) to Base Camp. This downhill climb was in fact extremely dangerous, since dusk was falling and they had to pass through the treacherous Khumbu icefall. At one point James told Westmacott he needed a rest, but Westmacott insisted he carry on. In retrospect James came to think that in doing so his companion had in fact saved his life. At Base Camp he typed out his message: ‘Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop awaiting improvement’ – which being interpreted actually meant: ‘Summit of Everest reached on 29 May by Hillary and Tenzing’. He gave it to a runner with instructions to hand it to the radio operator in Namche Bazaar, and to be ‘swift and silent’.

  The message got through, and on the morning of 2 June 1953 The Times ran its story.

  Everest had been climbed … Queen Elizabeth had been given the news on the eve of her Coronation. The crowds waiting in the wet London streets had cheered and danced to hear of it. After thirty years of endeavour, spanning a generation, the top of the earth had been reached and one of the greatest of all adventures accomplished.

  Coronation Everest was written by James as a straightforward story of this adventure. It was not published until 1958, five years after the event, since there was an understanding that it would have to wait until the participants had published their own books. And in those books, the climbers’ remarks about James were highly favourable. John Hunt wrote that he ‘had succeeded in capturing the very essence of the adventure and had followed the fortunes remarkably high up the mountain itself’.

  Twenty years later, in the pages of Conundrum, Jan is naturally more reflective.

  On Everest … I realised more explicitly some truths about myself. Though I was as fit as most of those men, I responded to different drives. I would have suffered almost anything to get those despatches safely back to London, but I did not share the mountaineers’ burning urge to see that mountain climbed. Perhaps it was too abstract an objective for me …

  She describes an encounter which doesn’t feature in Coronation Everest, with a holy man wandering in the mountains ‘for wandering’s sake’. He was lightly clothed, carried no possessions, and seemed almost to be in a trance. He and James met and silently acknowledged one another. Then, looking back at him, ‘the more I thought about it, the more clearly I realized that he had no body at all’. This sounds very like an expression of envy.

  The Everest story turned James Morris from an obscure foreign correspondent into an international celebrity. In the coming months he and members of the expedition were to be feted in Britain, the United States, Canada, and throughout the world. Queen Elizabeth received them officially at Buckingham Palace and President Eisenhower gave them a formal banquet at the White House. Knighthoods were bestowed on Hunt and Hillary. For James this was heady stuff indeed. Writing forty years after the event Jan said, ‘The effect on my ego was disastrous. I was twenty-six, sufficiently pleased with myself already, and the professional kudos that Everest brought me gave me a swollen head which has never quite subsided.’

  And of course there could never be another scoop like this (except that there was in fact a scoop to come of a different kind, during the Suez Crisis). James was to remain a journalist, on The Times and the Manchester Guardian, for nearly ten more years; but the Everest story would always be his greatest, and surely one of the great journalistic coups of the twentieth century.

  James’s next destination was the United States. He spent a year there, first in Chicago and then travelling throughout the country. James’
s arrangement with The Times was to send regular despatches from America, and these were later collected in his first published book, Coast to Coast. On his return from the US he was invited by The Times to be its Middle East correspondent, and so he and the young family returned to Cairo. General Bernard Montgomery’s sister, whose husband was a British civil servant, was leaving Cairo and she invited James and Elizabeth and their children to live on a houseboat they had occupied on the Nile. This was to be their home for the next two years.

  James was allowed a remarkable degree of freedom by his editors at The Times, and was only occasionally given a particular brief. Much had changed since he was on the staff of the Arab News Agency in the late 1940s. Nasser had ousted Farouk in Egypt, Israel had become an independent state, there were intense rivalries over oil, and the Soviet Union and the United States were vying to take over from Britain and France as the ‘guardians’ of the region. James travelled widely and freely throughout the Middle East, and his reports were written with the same verve as his writings in the books and essays. As always, Cairo fascinated and disturbed him:

  Nothing ever quite dies in Cairo, for the air is marvellously clear and dry, and the temper of the country astringently preservative. If you stand upon the Mokattam Hills, the bare-backed ridge that commands the place, you can see the pyramids of Giza upon its outskirts. From there they look faintly pink and translucent, like alabaster pyramids. They stand upon the very edge of the desert, where the sands are abruptly disciplined by the passage of the river, and they look fearfully old, terribly mysterious and rather frightening.